Rent Allied (2016)

highly watchable - Allied review by CP Customer

Pitt and Cotillard are fantastic in this film, their acting and on screen chemistry is fabulous. It is lovely to watch and very suspense filled - but you may have to put reality on hold as the full plot develops. Apart from that it is highly watchable

Disappointing - Allied review by Old Devonian

This film is overhyped and the trailer is a massive spoiler. I wanted to like it, but it is rubbish and it is such a shame two such good actors got lost in this unbelievable storyline, unbelievable sets, and stodgy dialogue with such a predictable ending. I stayed to the end and accept therefore that it was mildly entertaining but I was deeply disappointed.

Kind of Blue - Allied review by CH

In a review of the Marx Brothers' glossy production A Day at the Races, Graham Greene looked back in preference at their earlier work: “these revellers of the higher idiocy should not mingle with real people nor play before lavish scenery and an arty camera. Like the Elizabethans, they need only a chair, a painted tree”.

Paradoxically enough, Greene's remark came to mind while watching Allied (2016) which is set in the Europe of World War Two with Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard to the fore – against many an impressive background.

In the opening moments a parachute opens, and Pitt lands upon the desert somewhere in the vicinity of Casablanca, to which he is spirited in an automobile rather cleaner than one would expect amidst those swirling sands. Come the arrival in that fabled city, he – a Canadian agent – is embroiled in drama and romance akin to that for which the place supplied the title of a film eighty years ago.

No more than Bogart's joint was filmed in situ, Pitt did not descend from the clouds in this one. To say that this, and much of Allied, is a digital re-creation can miss the point (whether the scenes be there or Hampstead). One only needs to think of the many scenes in films across the decades in which people drive an automobile while it is clear that the twists and turns of the road are a back-projection. Good acting, and lighting, can carry aloft such a simulacrum: suspension of disbelief.

Directed by Robert Zemeckis (who began his career with Spielberg) from a script by Steven Knight, Allied draws upon many a wartime trope: eternal suspicions of a double-cross amidst a sexual free-for-all (at a party, as an air-raid siren goes off, a door opens beneath the stairs, whence naked breasts tumble forth, swiftly followed by a soldier on leave).

If the story sometimes appears about to clunk, Zemeckis's sense of pace carries it along, scant time to question its international logistics. The two-hour traffic of the screen is swift – and equally absorbing are the DVD's extras which a cinema audience would not have seen. As is often the case with such mini-documentaries, we are told that all concerned are geniuses to whom Leonardo would pay homage if he had anticipated cinema.

What becomes more interesting, in these brisk depictions of collaboration, is the way in which digital techniques can become the contemporary equivalent of the Elizabethan methods to which Greene alluded. A replica Lysander aeroplane was built when it became apparent that the necessity for rain would wreck the one surviving example – and the rest of that airfield's squadron was replicated upon a keyboard. Time and again, Brad Pitt and the others acted their scenes before a sheer-blue background: this would become the place in which Casablanca or Hampstead would be projected before our eyes.

Strange to think that Hollywood actors now find themselves working upon the equivalent of a bare-bones village-hall stage.

The ultimate judge is the retina - upon which Allied leaves a good impression. Even so the brain might question whether those agonies should become entertainment here and now. Perhaps that was the reaction to Casablanca.

N Africa, N London - Allied review by JJ

I enjoyed this more than I thought I would. The big budget helps - beautiful cinematography, excellent sound design and above all - in terms of production values - Ms Cotillard's costumes, a real throwback to the '40s and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

I don't really get the complaints made against the piece for its lack of realism or lack of emotion; I felt the latter was all there, but ironically more and more repressed as the couple's marriage allowed what should have been the opposite to occur. But as Pitt's CO, the excellent Jared Harris, says, marriages from the battlefield never work. It's hard from this juncture to imagine the terrifying emotions involved in the kind of undercover work of the film's first-half, it must have been be destructive and paranoid. Who amongst us can say how we would react to such nerve-shredding pressure?

Whilst it looks gorgeous & has some surprises up it's sleeve, it never truly takes flight - Allied review by TB

The pairing of Marion Cotillard & Brad Pitt should be in many ways a match made in heaven. And with Robert Zemeckis on directing duties, there was much to be excited about. However, this at times boring & underdeveloped film was only ever moderately entertaining, despite some inspirational flourishes.

Pitt and Cotillard star as Max Vatan (a Canadian spy,) and Marianne Beauséjour (a French resistance officer.) They are placed together as cover for an operation but quickly fall in love & then plan to live together. However, suspicion starts to fall on Marianne & Max must prove his new love's innocence in the face of suspicion & the threat of both of them being executed.

As much as this film clearly has been made with a lot of love & care, it is only sporadically successful, mainly in its technical aspects. As a couple, Pitt & Cotillard's chemistry is mostly dreadful. I have never been a fan of Cotillard's & again here she seems to have been brought in for her sultry French beauty & not much else. This is a role which should have been given to someone like Audrey Tatou, who could have done wonders with it.

In fact, the overwhelming emotion I got from watching this was blandness. I sat through to the end, mainly to see if the time I had put into watching it was worth it (it wasn't really, despite some unexpected twists,) but there was just about enough to give it 3 stars. Just don't expect to remember anything about it the moment it finishes.